Relaxation: On the morning of the Opening Reception, Sarah Aponte, who has 26 years of experience as a practitioner of mantra yoga meditation, will lead a guided relaxation exercise. The midway point of the conference between business meetings and panels seems like a good time to exhale away any pre-presentation tensions and re-charge for the full program ahead.

Committee Reports: Right after that exercise, we’ve scheduled time for “Substantive Committee Briefings,” where subcommittee chairs can report to substantive committee chairs, who will in turn need to report those findings at Executive Board 2 (on Wednesday, May 24th at 2pm). While some substantive and subcommittee chairs may coordinate to meet at other times, this time is worked in because it is sometimes difficult to track folks down during the conference.

Fiesta: Due to venue logistics, the libreros’reception will be held on the opening day of the conference, Monday, May 22nd. This will be a great way to festively welcome all new attendees to the SALALM family and “break the ice” sooner. Don’t forget to support your faithful DJ by filling out the song request form!

Detroit Day Trip: We still have a few spots for a post-conference day trip to Detroit. Please fill out this form if you would like to participate.

It’s almost April and the conference is fast approaching! Please do not leave registration and hotel booking to the last minute. The conference lodging venues are filling up quickly. The Inn at the Michigan League is already full.

As always, please contact me or Barbara Alvarez (Chair of Local Arrangements) if you have any questions.

Here we are after our docent-led visit to the sunny Diego Rivera mural courtyard at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

Dear members,

I had a lovely time during my site visit at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in mid-September. Since I arrived early, Barbara Alvarez took me to the Detroit Institute of the Arts where we visited the Diego Rivera mural courtyard. This visit was made more meaningful by the friendly docent who led a talk about the mural’s themes as well as historical and personal anecdotes about Rivera’s time in Detroit. The impromptu lecture nicely paralleled the intention of next year’s conference theme in that he used teaching to help connect us to art and its significance. During lunch at the museum café, we also had a chance to listen to live music! Barbara is planning a post-conference day trip to Detroit and, as this will most likely be one of your stops, I am certain those of you who sign up will have a great time.

Local Arrangements Team on the move!

Music follows me because once on campus, from my room at the Inn at the Michigan League, I had a moment of musical reverie courtesy of The Burton Memorial Tower and Carillon bells. (If you would like to make a request ahead of your stay, you can try tweeting @umich using the hashtag #CarillonRequest.) Barbara, Nerea, and I spent time visiting spaces for panels, workshops, and receptions, and the conversations that resulted helped us solidify conference details. I met some of the Hatcher Library administration and staff who are hosting us or who will be helping to organize the conference. I also met two librarians who will lead two of the workshops we have in store for you. I’m grateful that Barbara has put me in touch with local specialists to make these events possible. The local talent is such that I did not need to look far for someone to hit the high notes of intellectual inspiration at opening session. I’m very pleased to announce that Dr. Kenneth Mills (J. Frederick Hoffman Professor of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor) has accepted our invitation to be keynote speaker. He has several friends and admirers in SALALM so I know that you will all make him feel right at home among us.

One of the highlights of my trip came during down times when I spent time with Barbara and Nerea and their families. As a way to explain our farewells after dinner in the evenings, Nerea would say to her little girl, who was the life of our merry parties, “Daisy está regresando a casa a cargar sus baterías!” Así que nuevamente me despido a cargar mis baterías, esperando que ustedes sigan cargando las suyas para poco a poco estar a los 100% en mayo 2017!

It has now been a few months since I’ve seen your smiling faces in Charlottesville. I would like to once again thank Paloma Celis-Carbajal, Miguel Valladares Llata, the Secretariat, and the entire SALALM 2016 team for all their hard work and for such an impressive experience. Attending our annual conference gives me a professional and spiritual lift. Hearing about all your projects is both inspiring and motivational. And the signature of the SALALM conference experience is the chance to spend time with such bright and warm colleagues. My personal SALALM afterglow tends to fade after a few weeks when my daily routine sets in. I am happy to report that this year, it feels like it is extending much longer because I can see that we are finding new ways to connect even while we are physically and temporally apart. Members are availing themselves of GoToMeeting, Skype, and the good old fashioned telephone to continue SALALM work after the last conference has wrapped up and leading up to the next one. The latest in this push for continuity are the Google Groups being created, most recently by the subcommittees for Marginalized Peoples and Ideas and Cataloging and Bibliographic Technology, respectively. Several of you also keep us current year-round via our social media presence on Facebook and Twitter. As a trusted SALALM advisor recently noted to me, these efforts are promising in terms of the possibilities of sustaining our work and productivity year-round. My compliments to all of you for your steadfast dedication and for keeping the fire lit throughout the year. SALALM is all the stronger for it!

Looking ahead to next year’s conference, I would like to share that the theme has been finalized and translated into Spanish and Portuguese and is available for you to review and share. I would like to extend a special thanks to Ana Domínguez Ochoa, Luis González, and Hortensia Calvo for translating and editing the Spanish version and to Vera Araujo, Tim Thompson, and Ana DeAssis-Thompson for translating and editing our theme into Portuguese. Our panel and presentation submission form is now available, as well. Many thanks to Sarah Aponte and Tim Thompson for translating the form into Spanish and Portuguese. Please note that if you are proposing an individual paper rather than a panel, the panel-related fields will disappear (and vice-versa). Please also note that the paper and panel submission deadline falls on December 5, 2016 this time. The early deadline will allow us to accommodate the workshops and research-a-thons* to be featured at the conference. I hope that the integration of these new formats into our regular program will be a meaningful and worthwhile experience for all of you and look forward to receiving your paper and panel proposals.

My next message to you is scheduled for after my site visit with Barbara Álvarez, Chair of the Local Arrangements Committee, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Many of you will be reading my post in the midst of the busy fall semester. You will also have received the SALALM membership renewal and committee preference forms, which are sent out in September, from the Secretariat. Please keep this in mind as you schedule your professional annual renewals. Here’s to a successful fall semester!

Warm regards,
Daisy

* Thanks to Alison Hicks and Jesús Alonso-Regalado for helping me to add the term research-a-thon to my vocabulary.